


kill the lights and kiss my eyes

by tlkdr (SlimeQueen)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Childhood Memories, Cuddling, Domestic Bliss, First Love, Intimacy, M/M, Nostalgia, Pining, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Sweet Richie Tozier, Tenderness, the yearning is strong with this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27396379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlimeQueen/pseuds/tlkdr
Summary: Their love has always been a summer song, the air hung with humidity that clings to the nape of Richie’s neck, sharing space and breaths in sunlit corners, limbs entangled.They’re made from long sunny days at the quarry, the smell of the forest clinging to their skin as they trample through the underbrush, hand in hand, wet hair drying in the heat of the hazy afternoon. It’s sleepovers and sugary candy dissolving in their mouths on balmy, still nights where Richie perches on the windowsill of his bedroom and smokes a cigarette while Eddie sprawls on the bed and reads comics, the silence between them comfortable and familiar.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 15
Kudos: 81





	kill the lights and kiss my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I made [a clown twitter](https://twitter.com/tozierCOCK) if anyone wants to see my unhinged tweets about richie's boobs

It’s nameless. It is the brush of Eddie’s socks against his skinny, adolescent bandage-littered shins when he tilts his head back and stretches to warm his face in the sun. It is the static of his breath in the night over the phone when Richie’s across the country and can’t sleep, jittery and pacing in his hotel as Eddie hums sleepily into the microphone from all the way back home in California, his phone pressed between his cheek and the pillow.

It is the scent of him, directly from the nape of his neck when Richie buries his face in the sleep-warm skin at the top Eddie’s spine and inhales, only half awake, and his shoulders loosen, shedding tension he can’t remember them having as Eddie fits into his space, moves in his orbit. He could not explain it if he tried.

It is a tender ache in his chest that he’s carried so long he’s forgotten when it started, heavy and full and sweet, ripe like summer peaches bursting on his tongue when Eddie folds to his chest and beds his cheek where Richie’s neck meets his shoulder, fingers splayed over the small of Richie’s bare back.

The grass cradles them, spiky against sweat-sticky lanky limbs rife with growing pains, hides them in a secret, personal world that’s always been this, simply, joyously _this_ : the helpless huff of Eddie’s laughter when he draws Richie down for a kiss, their mouths molding together full and sweet, Richie’s long legs bracketing his hips, his hands still so uncertain, heart in his hands when he whispers in the space between their mouths, “ _It’s you_. _It’s always going to be you_.”

Their love has always been a summer song, the air hung with humidity that clings to the nape of Richie’s neck, sharing space and breaths in sunlit corners, limbs entangled. They’re made from long sunny days at the quarry, the smell of the forest clinging to their skin as they trample through the underbrush, hand in hand, wet hair drying in the heat of the hazy afternoon. It’s sleepovers and sugar dissolving in their mouths on balmy, still nights where Richie perches on the windowsill of his bedroom and smokes a cigarette while Eddie sprawls on the bed and reads comics, the silence between them comfortable and familiar.

Childhood is a strange and fickle thing. Richie thinks of the tang of blood in his mouth, bruises and blows and slurs and cracked glasses and salt in old wounds that flare with remembrance. There is bad. There has always been so much bad and hurt, hate and cruelty for a skinny little boy with a heart so big he didn’t know what to do with it. And then there is Eddie. There has always been Eddie, for as long as Richie has been Richie, for as long as he has known how to want.

Wanting Eddie is a low smoldering in the pit of his belly that never quite learned how to cool after so many years of careful cultivation. It is something essential to him, as easy as breathing or simply being. It burns through lazy summers where they become part the forest, the seven of them, lurking amongst the trees and streams, feet muddy and underarms musky, lying in sun-dappled fields by the old train tracks and picking fat, juicy scarlet berries off bushes that burst between his teeth, sweet and sticky. They had been like a part of Derry itself, hungry and young and alive, spending dusk prowling the underbrush for tinder.

Eddie and Ben had engineered their bonfires while Richie and Bev shared smokes, Stan’s head bedded in Richie’s lap, his pale, skinny fingers winding through the summer-bleached golden curls, gentle and deft. On Bev’s other side, she and Mike are shoulder to shoulder, the two of them simultaneously laughing at Eddie and Ben and trying to make suggestions that may be helpful in any other circumstance, Bill watching over all of them with his clear blue eyes (— _hero’s eyes_ , Richie liked to think to himself in moments of awe, when Big Bill would say something particularly bold or lovely, as he was quite often apt to do) introspective and thoughtful as always. He tips his head back and releases a cloud of smoke, watches the way it dissolves into the darkening sunset, and feels like a dragon surrounded by its hoard.

The pain of old wounds do not tug mercilessly anymore, stitched by six pairs of loving hands he’s memorized long ago, long and slender like Stan’s, strong and masculine like Mike’s, and most of all Eddie’s skinny, cool fingers around the stretch of his wrist, peachy and freckled against the corpselike paleness of his own skin. There has been hurt—nearly thirty whole years of it, of loss and loneliness and _wanting_ , always the ceaseless, desperate wanting, even not knowing exactly what he’d desired so badly. But the memories come back, and Richie finds that there has always been love, too.

The love that wells up inside him is slow, thick and sticky and golden like honey, coating his throat and chest with its dizzying sweetness. Richie inhales against Eddie’s hair, soft, disheveled from his own pale fingers, and his scalp smells like pine. Like the days of their youth, spent yelling and playing and laughing and living, rowdy with the giddiness of being together. It is strange, Richie thinks, which little things remain unchanged.

Eddie tilts his head and looks to him, his eyes framed by those gorgeous dark lashes, his face lined with age from the years Richie never got to see, the crinkle between his solemn brows pronounced now in a way it had never been when they were kids, crows’ feet kissing the corners of his eyes when he smiles, healthy and happy and in Richie’s arms, a solid reminder of everything he’s been given, and Richie’s so full of this overwhelming, all-encompassing feeling.

Sometimes he wakes up slick with cold sweat, old fears clutching tight at his chest, and he looks over at Eddie’s sleeping face across the bed, barely daring to breathe, and he wonders how on earth he could ever deserve this. To be safe and happy and warm, sharing a bed with the man he’s loved for so long that it’s become an inherent part of him. To make a home with Eddie, like the silly little fantasies he’d only allowed himself to have in the dark stillness of his bedroom, imagining how he and Eddie would spend their twenties anywhere other than Derry. To be loved back, with the same aching tenderness bright in Eddie’s eyes when he curls his fingers through Richie’s hair and tugs him closer to brush their mouths together.

(“ _You deserve it,”_ Eddie had murmured into the vulnerable, soft skin below his jaw, and his eyes had been serious, not a hint of mirth in the deep brown of his irises, unprompted, as if he’d reached into Richie’s mind and plucked the thought from it, given it a thorough beating and thrown it out for the night. _“Richie, you deserve it more than anyone._ ”

In that moment, under Eddie’s dark eyes and gentle hands, he had let himself dare to believe it for the first time in his life.)

He looks down at Eddie Kaspbrak, who he has been in love with since he was thirteen, gawky and awkward and raw, and who he loves now, old and wrinkled and still so, so raw. Who he will love for another thirty years. Who, he thinks in a moment of swelling love that wets his lashes and tightens his throat, he will love forever.

_It’s you. It’s always been you._


End file.
